its history or use; but I do not suppose it is of earlier date than the
age of Francis Ist, as the Roman or Italian style is blended with the
Gothic arch. The Chapel of the Sepulchre, is not uncommonly pointed out
as an object of admiration. There is certainly some, handsome sculpture
round the portal; but it is not this for which your admiration is
required: you are told that the chapel was made in 1612, at the expence
of a traveller, then just returned from Palestine, and that it offers a
faithful representation of the Holy Sepulchre itself at Jerusalem; by
which if we are to understand that the wretched, grisly, painted, wooden
figures of the three Maries, and other holy women and holy men,
assembled round a disgusting representation of the dead Saviour, have
their prototype in Judea, I can only add I am sorry for it: for my own
part, putting aside all question of the propriety or effect of
symbolical worship, and meaning nothing offensive to the Romish faith, I
must be allowed to say that most assuredly I can conceive nothing less
qualified to excite feelings of devotion, or more certain to awaken
contempt and loathing, than the images of this description, the
tinselled virgins, and the wretched daubs, nick-named paintings, which
abound in the churches of Picardy and Normandy, the only catholic
provinces which I have yet visited; so that, if the taste of the
inhabitants is to be estimated by the decoration of the religious
buildings, this faculty must be rated very low indeed. The exterior of
the church is as richly ornamented as the inside; and not a buttress,
arch, or canopy is without the remains of crumbled carving, worn by
time, or disfigured by the ruder hand of calvinistic or revolutionary
violence. Tradition refers the erection of this edifice to the English.
From the certainty with which a date may be assigned to almost every
part, it is very interesting to the lover of architecture. The
Lady-Chapel is also perhaps one of the last specimens of Gothic art, but
still very pure, except in some of the smaller ornaments, such, as the